


This Other Life

by lab



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:34:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lab/pseuds/lab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Nina in the 2007 Yuletide challenge. Thanks go out to amike, PG and SeFu for advice, cheerleading and beta.</p>
    </blockquote>





	This Other Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninamazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninamazing/gifts).



> Written for Nina in the 2007 Yuletide challenge. Thanks go out to amike, PG and SeFu for advice, cheerleading and beta.

Fifteen days, three hours and twenty-seven minutes ago, Charlotte Charles (henceforth referred to as "Chuck") was whisked out of her old life by a plastic bag and an abundance of sea-water and deposited at the threshold of what was to become her new life, her life. It was a life without her aunts and without her bees, but it held other things; such as the Pie Maker (henceforth referred to as "Ned"), the Pie Hole and adventures she'd only known from her books. 

Something was off, something was odd - and she wasn't sure whether it was the world at large, or just the part she referred as 'herself'. After Lawrence Schatz had left her his life in a case of accidental involuntary man-slaughter, Chuck had vowed to embrace it. However, the more she tried, the more it slipped away, and the more it slipped away, the more Chuck wanted to belong. Soon she didn't find herself wanting to be whoever she wanted to be, she just wanted to be herself. Again. 

Because there were changes. Strange, hard-to-explain, I-don't-remember-putting-on-these-shoes-in-the-morning changes.

For instance, Chuck couldn't remember that she'd ever been particularly fond of counting, but in this other life she found herself counting continuously: The slices of pie sold (23 today, with a weekly average of 149), the number of mugs in Ned's kitchen (9), her days alive (15).

The facts, she realised, were these: Chuck feared that if she didn't count, she'd be disconnected from the world around her, and once she was disconnected from the world around her, it would easily vanish into thin air.

Sometimes, it did. 

This was when life around her stopped in its tracks. She would walk down the street, all good spirits and film star sunglasses she had never had and then the world stopped. Just like that. It became hard to blink, let alone to take a step (and the next one, or the one after that). Smells were etched into the air, sunlight beat down on her skin and the cars speeding by would sound like the hum of thousands of angry bees. Bees she had neglected and left behind. 

At first, the time-stopping thing was merely odd, which was to be expected if one considered the circumstances. After a while Chuck noticed something else. So small and peculiar that she couldn't put her finger on it at first.

On the second day she had been alive (again), she couldn't remember the taste of her favourite cheese. After she'd told Ned, he had disentangled himself from a heap of blankets and excused himself. He had returned an hour later, out of breath and dishevelled, with a piece Gruyere, wrapped in brown paper.

Their fingers were only a heartbeat apart when Ned offered her the cheese. Chuck could feel the warmth of Ned's fingertips and the small tremors running through him as they both held onto the parcel for a split-second. She also remembered that Ned's hand jerked away as if touched by an electric jolt once that second had passed.

When she took a bite, she was sure that this was her favourite cheese but she couldn't remember tasting it before. 

Day after day, she lost bits and pieces of herself, like the heirlooms she sent away in small orange-and-silver parcels. At night she found herself thinking of her memories, chopped up and sealed in little boxes. Chuck hoped that, just like the heirlooms, they would end up somewhere, preferably with Ned or her aunts.

*

The only place where time didn't stop was the Pie Hole. The Pie Hole, often underrated for its culinary achievements, was indeed a place where things didn't stop, but start. When Chuck decided to take the life that belonged to her into her own hands, the Pie Hole was indeed the place to go.

"Hey," Chuck said and plopped down next to Emerson. "I've been alive, again, I mean alive again for fifteen days, three hours and some minutes."

Emerson promptly engaged in a staring contest with his apple pie. "You don't say."

"I've been thinking to do a little soul-searching. I've been dead for at least two days, seven hours and, well, some minutes before I was alive again. My soul must've gone somewhere. It wouldn't rest in that coffin all the time. It must have gone somewhere and done something."

Emerson let out a long-drawn sigh and continued to pick at the crust of his pie. "Sixteen minutes."

"What?" It took Chuck to get used to Emerson's deductive and combinatory skills. Especially when they kicked in with some delay.

"Dead for two days, three hours and sixteen minutes." Emerson said after a pause. "And if you continue talking about soul-searching I'll charge you for it by the minute. Since you don't have any money, the only way I would go on a search for your soul would be if it lead us to some real money. And that's not going to happen, is it?" 

Chuck shook her head. 

"Thought so." With that Emerson Cod left, in search of a more rewarding conversation.

*

"Why doesn't Emerson like me?" Chuck asked Ned while they were peeling apples, with Chuck rolling them over to Ned and carefully not watching him. Ned got flustered when she talked about herself, her death, her life, them, their work, his powers or his relationship with Digby (effectively narrowing down their conversation to movies and pies). And when he got flustered he'd withdraw and/or do something stupid.

In this case 'stupid' meant cutting himself while peeling an apple.

"Oh, I think he likes you. Everybody likes you. It's impossible not to like you. You're the most likeable person in the world. You're my most likeable person on in the world. The person I like most, I mean." As Chuck watched Ned slicing his thumb while stuttering these words, blood dripping all over the worktop, she decided to add Emerson to the list of things not to talk about in the proximity of sharp and pointy objects.

The kitchen smelled of cinnamon, apples, and, strangely, wilted flowers. While she watched Ned stammering and bleeding all over himself, Chuck felt once more as if time had stopped, but in a good way.

Apparently, that was what Ned meant when he said that she was obsessed by morbid things.

In an attempt to stop the kitchen from turning into a safety hazard, Chuck grabbed a dish towel and moved towards Ned.

"Don't." He clutched his thumb in his unhurt hand and retreated into the far corner of the kitchen, until he was pressed against the freezer. "We still haven't established possible consequences of bodily fluids. In any way, they're possibly deadly, which is why you should never, ever come close to me when I'm bleeding. Or sneezing."

Sometimes Chuck felt like pushing Ned. Just a little. She smirked. "But it's not alive, in the sense of being you, or a part of you, technically speaking. Like hair? Maybe you can touch the tips of my hair, since technically they're not alive."

Ned's tone left no room for arguments. "No experiments. With that." He flinched as he wrapped the corner of his shirt around his finger.

"Just theoretically."

"Not even theoretically. Because theories lead to hypotheses which in turn lead to experiments and we're not experimenting here." As an afterthought he added, "and you're not a firefly. No experimenting here."

Chuck raised an eyebrow. "So. We're serious."

As an answer, Ned reached behind him and opened the door of the freezer, putting glass between them. The cold made his breath draw crystalline patterns on the surface. "Of all things, serious is probably the best way to describe it." And then he offered her one of his quick, hesitant smiles. 

Chuck raised her hand and touched the glass, watching Ned mirroring the gesture on the other side. For the first time in a long while, she felt that the smile on her face belonged to her.


End file.
